Ride the Titanic! (36 page)

By now, water covers the forward two-thirds of the
Titanic
, and like in the original disaster at this critical point, the stress forces reach their overload point. With a cosmic, thundering CRACK, the keel snaps, sending the forward two-thirds of the ship completely underwater, while the stern falls back onto the water with a resounding splash – in our case, created by a series of explosive water jets beneath the stern. The real stern had an ocean to fall into. Ours only has a narrow trench.

The next sequence happens much faster than it did in real life. A fine water mist, invisible to the eye, covers the stern section to provide a smooth surface upon which HD projectors beam CGI images of bodies leaping into the ocean, followed by ‘pops’ from hidden water cannons to simulate passengers jumping into the water. The stern remains horizontal for a few tantalizing seconds before being yanked into the abyss like a half-pulled molar still attached by a slender thread to the jaw of a dying patient.

The final curtain is ringing down, but not without a sound track. Inaudible at first, buried deep inside the symphony of natural sound effects ricocheting back and forth inside the ride area, the symphonic music grows louder and louder, until it rings out full volume to capture the attention of pedestrian traffic.

How to describe in words the soundscape that fills the air? Imagine a low-throated kind of dirge with human voices and electronic echoes rising ever so slowly through the musical scale, not unlike the
Dolby
TrueHD
music that runs at the beginning of a feature film; a rising musical scale that intersects with a falling one.

Only in our case the composer added a pulsing rhythm, like a heartbeat growing louder and louder, as the stern sinks lower and lower until it vanishes in a foamy, swirly, mist-filled moment that churns the water surface for a few precious seconds, and then becomes glass-smooth once again. As it does, our mist bars activate, the 3D laser-projectors fire up, and blue-white words rise up from the ocean proclaiming:

RMS Titanic

April 15, 1912

The epitaph wavers in place for ten long seconds before it too, sinks into the sea to join its namesake.

Another second of silence before my earpiece fills with Molly’s crisp, matter-of-fact voice. ‘Re-cue ride to start. All stations confirm status and prepare to surface.’

The mist bars quadruple their spray pattern height as the HD lasers kick in with a projection sequence of iconic photographs of the
Titanic
in the Belfast shipway, just days before she launched, men working on her massive propellers, the riveted hull, and so on and so forth. The soundtrack shifts from ominous farewell to hopeful beginnings – all of which to hide history running in reverse as the
Titanic
re-surfaces, hidden behind the water curtains, to repeat her fatal dive.

Joe regards the images gliding across the mist wall, his hand to his brow like the ancient mariner. ‘Opacity ain’t too hot. I can see through it. Crank up your spray.’

‘Can’t. We’re at max.’ I key my mike. ‘Molly, boost the beam levels. We’re seeing the wizard of Oz hiding behind the curtain.’

‘Stand by.’

The laser projectors brighten considerably and the photograph of the
Titanic
at the Southampton docks on the day she sailed darkens until the ghostly image becomes rock solid, and in doing so obscures the amazing engineering feat taking place behind the spray wall.

‘Better,’ Joe says. ‘Come on back, baby, come to papa.’

At first, the only evidence of this massive, miraculous feat of theatrical engineering is a roiling tempest on the water. Then, just like in a real submarine, two-hundred feet below the water surface, compressed air blasts into the immense ballast tanks on either side of the Fincantini pressure hull, forcing water out and buoyancy in. The
Titanic
rises vertically for sixty feet, her massive guide pinions on the sides of the hull sliding smoothly inside their greased channels. Simultaneously, her hull section slowly pivots from vertical down to horizontal until it locks into place.

The tips of her smokestacks break the surface, then the Boat Deck, the bridge, the Promenade A Deck, the forward lookout mast – deck by deck, on she comes, porthole by porthole, rising inexorably as she will twice a night, rain or shine, a five hundred foot-long
Phoenix
emerging from her watery grave in happy Las Vegas where dreams – like this one – really do come true.

‘Ride re-cued.’

‘Good work, Molly, take the rest of the week off – kidding.’

A dry chuckle, then, ‘Still got the promo to run, sir.’

A moment later, the laser-projected images on the mist curtain dissolve from historic photographs to a modern day image of the
Titanic,
with our iceberg-shaped
White Star Grand Hotel
looming in the background. The elegiac sound music cross-fades to an ominous, deep-throated chord as fiery-red letters appear:

Ride the Titanic!

Live the Adventure

April 12

The effect holds for a dramatic five-count, then the water mist disappears in a final upward rush, creating a curtain-rising effect that once again reveals the
Titanic
in all her glory, re-cued and ready to set sail again.

‘
Fantastico
!’ Joe punches my shoulder. ‘Gotta’ tell you,
paisan
, I never thought I’d see the day that cockamamie model in your basement would turn into something like this.’

I try to answer, but my voice is so thick with emotion that nothing comes out. Joe punches me harder. ‘Sometimes dreams come true, kid. Enjoy this one while you can, in case the nightmares come.’

‘They will.’

‘’Course they will. Hey, I was just being nice. So you be nice, too. Give us a smile like you’re on top of the world, because you are until it turns again. C’mon. . . .’ He holds up his phone. ‘For Geena and the kids. Remember them? Give me a big Irish mick smile.’

As I do my best, Molly’s voice pipes up again in my earpiece. ‘EMV recovery in five. . .four. . .three. . .’

The EMV’s propulsion motors thrum into life as our computer program, using a combination of refined GPS positioning and local RF triangulation, perform the final step in the ride process; disembarking the premium ride passengers and then returning the lifeboats to the newly-risen ship.

Xia’s boat moves alongside ours for a brief moment before taking the lead in the single-file procession toward the dock. She sits in the bow like George Washington crossing the Delaware, while her Las Vegas VIPs sit behind her staring mutely at the immensity of an ocean liner floating in the middle of Las Vegas that moments before, disappeared before their eyes.

As we near the edge of the dive basin the dock slides out from inside its hidden storage area, followed by a crowd of ride attendants to assist in the unloading. Xia waves at me and I manage a small congratulatory salute, to which she responds with an equally small nod and smiles back. I make a ‘call me’ gesture with my hand. She shakes her head and points to her eyes. ‘See me.’

I shake my head, point back to the ship, and then to Joe and me. We’ve got unfinished business.

She taps her watch.

I mouth ‘one hour,’ and salute.

Her frown deepens, but then her boat arrives and she has to resume playing Border collie to her flock of VIP sheep.

‘Molly, we’re coming back on board,’ I say.

‘Override Boat Five-Delta,’ (our EMV’s assignment number).

Had she not done so, infrared sensors along the gunwale would detect our onboard presence after the disembarkation process and disable the craft’s propulsion jets. Instead, we dutifully tag along in a daisy chain of empty lifeboats gliding back along their pre-programmed route to enter the forward access hatch of the waiting ship.

Joe drums his fingers on the gunwale. ‘Twenty-six days and counting. How you doing?’

‘Nervous.’

‘No surprise. I remember with
Astro Blasters
, I had to re-paint the
Circle Vision
mural twice. From scratch. Had the runs for a week.’

‘You did a great job on that ride.’

‘Make sure you eat a lot of fiber is all I can say.’

‘Roger that.’

‘And make sure things at home are hunky-dory.’

‘Meaning?’

‘Meaning, they’re not.’

‘Who told you that?’

‘Nobody. I can tell.’

‘You doing your Italian psychic thing again?’

He rubs his fingers like passing gold coins through them. ‘My grandfather herded sheep in Sicily. Poor guy couldn’t even write his name, but he could see the future. Always told me one day I would be a great artist.’

‘He was right.’

‘Not the ‘great’ part but yeah, he knew what was going to happen, just like I know that once this dream of yours is up and running, that you and Geena got a lot of work to do or your marriage is gonna’ go down with all hands.’

‘You’re crazy.’

‘Like a fox, because the same thing happened to Marianna and me with
Astro Blasters
. Said I had to choose between paint or pussy. Then she packed her bags and left.’

‘She actually said that?’

‘Used a lot more Catholic-sounding words, but yeah.’

‘What’d you do?’

‘I packed my bags and followed. She got as far as a Holiday Inn. I checked into the room next to hers.’

He falls silent.

‘And?’

He shrugs. ‘We worked things out,
Grazie di Dio
.’

‘How was their pool?’

He grins. ‘Never found out. Good thing too, since I can’t swim.’

‘Sounds like you knew how to dive, though.’

‘Between the sheets for sure. Once a submariner always a submariner.’

As our lifeboat flotilla approaches the
Titanic’s
hull, a square, fifteen-by-fifteen foot slab of steel slides upward and a set of girders shakes itself open and extends outward like grasshopper legs to become the recovery ramp. On a normal night, the ride cycle will eject thirty or more EMV’s into the water. When finished, they’ll be recovered and readied for the next ride in less than half an hour. Tonight there are only four lifeboats. Xia’s empty boat ahead of us nudges into the ‘V’ shaped guide, clamps attach to the keel and pull it up the ramp and into the ship. Ours follows, up and into the waiting darkness.

Our cavernous EMV storage compartment resembles a marina that mothballs boats for the winter months. For space considerations, fifteen additional EMV’s are stored here outside the pressure hull. Because they’re waterproofed and their electronic systems triple-protected, they can withstand full immersion. But on a moment’s notice, they can be moved inside the pressure hull by means of an ingress hatch installed just aft of the cap, which even now is opening with a stupendous hiss of escaping air, followed by a screaming ‘WHOOP!’ as Ellie runs out, followed by a much more sedate Molly.

Ellie jumps into my arms.

‘We DID it, boss! Top to bottom, perfect footage of the entire ride. I can’t BELIEVE it! Miracles DO come true.’

She acts like I feel; happy, relieved, and joyful, like an untied balloon zooming all over the place. I manage to look past her to Molly and Lewis who stand stone-faced. Their reserve makes me untangle myself, while Ellie hangs onto my arm like I’m the hottest date in town.

I say to Lewis, ‘I thought everything went great!’

He and Molly exchange uneasy looks.

She says, ‘Sir. . . .’ And falls mute.

Lewis says, ‘Had a small breach issue with the ingress hatch.’

Molly says, ‘I noticed it in time, sir, but. . .’

‘But what?’

‘But I think it may have been tampered with.’

The chill of the air conditioning adds to my shiver of apprehension. ‘Let’s take a look.’

The ingress hatch is the ‘front door’ to the ride and needs to be secured and watertight before the dive starts. During a normal ride cycle, after the EMV’s are re-inserted inside the pressure hull, six interlocking pins secure the hatch to keep water out.

Molly’s laser pointer dances over the pin’s wiring terminals.

‘These two here and here, sir. They seem okay, but when we checked them more closely, their connections were reversed.’

‘Which means?’

‘Nothing. That’s the problem. The pins didn’t move on command. And with only four of the six dogged, we started leaking. And the deeper we got, the more water came inside the pressure hull.’

‘How bad?’

‘We would have sunk. . .’ she flushes and falls silent.

Lewis says, ‘Modesty prevents Molly from adding that she spotted this in time to override the Christmas Tree and kept us in one piece. Didn’t you, Molly?’

She shrugs. ‘Just glad I caught it in time, sir.’

‘Why didn’t you P-stop?’

She gives me a measured stare. ‘I figured you wanted news crews filming a successful dive instead.’

‘You saw all green on the tree, right?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘So, what made you think something was wrong?’

She lifts her small determined chin. ‘I trust myself more than systems, sir. Something told me we had a problem, so I shut the secondary hatch, tripled the air pressure and it worked. But just barely. We still had some flooding, but nothing serious. ‘

I stuck out my hand. ‘Thank you.’

Her smile lights up the place. ‘Just doing my job.’

‘And you just got command of our maiden voyage, captain.’

I salute her. She smiles self-consciously and half-salutes back.

After everyone leaves but Joe and me, I ask Lewis point-blank. ‘Sabotage or screw-up?’

‘Won’t know until we get hold of the vendor.’

‘Who supplied the sensors?’

‘Shenshang.’

‘China?’

‘Where else?’

‘How soon can you find out?’

He checks his watch. ‘They’re fifteen hours ahead of us, which means it’s close to cocktail hour.’

‘Nobody drinks in China.’

‘They’ll start when I get done with them.’ He lopes off.